Wank.Wank.Testing one two.The night,
the organism.The rented trucks,
the wired-up and
jump-started, the microbuses.The highway clogged with what’s happenings, with bongs and
where
the hormones tick tick tick.So we drove the vee dub into the ditch, leaped the fence, and hit drives
with putters from the miniature golf course.He’s house artist now at a local rock ‘n’ roll club.She
had some skills, but the technology
changes so fast.For a while, when
the guitars filled the air with
messages, when the giggling Viet Nam vet forgot
he was driving and crunched Juicy Plantman’s U-
Haul, a voice told a dark
story.He was backing up.Someone rolled off the roof, landed on
his feet.
Everyone cheered.America, freedom.A war somewhere. When he came home from Nam he tried
to
kill his brother who turned him on to acid and now he was driving into trees
and trucks.Happy,
he said, happy happy in this unexpected America.

______

AS SPOKEN OVER THE SHRIEK OF NIRVANA

As a teenager, I was featured

on all three “majors,” danced to
the jostle

of Fox network’s hand-held
cam.

I turned and turned

to face you, where you slouched

on your couches, on your
La-Z-boys,

rummaging your loud hands

in the cellophane. I sang

of my adventures, stalking the
street’s

black tongue, a word no one could
bring

himself to speak, and you--

you squirmed and placed

your hands upon the stolid

virtues of your wife and sank

among your remotes, your
processors

and cels, while I took

the burden of your angst

and strapped it on my back

like an AK-47, and I

took the burden of your
pulselessness,

pierced one nipple with it,

and hung the star there of a
brand

new Bethlehem, and I

took the burden of your
sexlessness

and drove it through the walls of
fire

at the ends of all your
driveways.

It bores me, your despair--so
like

a blinking caution light

at three a.m. when all the drunks

have hauled themselves

up from their murky prisons

to witness the inevitable

decline of morning, sunlight

sabotaging each heartfelt
illusion,

the manager of the All Night

Food Emporium standing in the
aisle

of condiments saying What?

to the assembled relishes and
dressings.

It is true my friends--

as the shadows form across your
walls

an electrocardiogram

of your virtue, I am engaged

in a kind of exorcism: I die

again. This time for your sinlessness.

This time for the pastel rooms

where you sing your pains to
sleep. This time

for the blindfolded angels
perched

hunched and shivering behind your
ribs

______

MEMORANDUM:INPUTTING OUTCOMES ASSESSMENTS FOR INDIVIDUALS CURRENTLY
ENROLLED AS POST-SECONDARY ARTS
EDUCATION CONSUMERS:A REPORT
COMPOSED BY THE
CONSULTING
GROUP UPON COMPLETION OF THE RECENT SITE VISIT

Because the flatulent professors

remain deadlocked. Because

they are plagued by memories

and unremediated squalor.

Because in each cubicle

hangs a photograph of the insipid

paying homage to the inane. Because

the Encyclopedia of Unstable Referents

has been consulted. Because the armature

is spinning without effect

or noticeable profit. Because

the students have lost their purchase

on the cambered slopes of laissez faire.

Because the night sky has been instructed

and authorized. Because we have been

unable to assess. Because someone sang C

when we pointed to D. Because the overhead

transparencies, the computer printouts.

Because these numbers, when plotted

against the national average, do not
exemplify

the enhanced outcomes we’d predicted

during our previous visit. Because

these brush strokes

fall outside the parameters. Because

the message is unmeasurable and is plagued

by interference. Because

the signifiers seem randomly placed.

Because such phrases as

“April is the cruelest month”

present undecidable propositions.

Because your students’ works escape

the tools we’ve designed to capture our data

and, therefore, do not, strictly speaking,

exist.
Because we are not authorized

to modify the apparatus. Because our studies

clearly demonstrate an accuracy

plus or minus three percent.

Because we are dedicated

to indexing measurable

arts-related activities,

we regret to inform you

that we can no longer validate

your institutional outcomes.

______

MEMORANDUM: FROM THE MINISTER OF POSTURE / RE: FACULTY SLOUCHING

It has been brought to my attention

that faculty have been slouching

at department meetings.They have been

yawning and stretching, scratching

at importune moments.That

they have been publishing excessively

will be taken up at our weekly

planning session.That they seem

unable or unwilling to control

their rampant imaginings will be addressed

by the counseling staff.We can only

do so much.Our purview

is limited.Their fragrant goose-stepping

is perhaps beyond our control.

Their dank, mildewed offices

will be addressed by Facilities.

Their frequent bellowing and moaning

we expect to subside.Their coiffures

and vestments are, alas, irremediable.

About their slouching I am open to
suggestions.

I will remind you that we have tried

public humiliation.Brow-beating

has failed.For years, we have had to endure

their inability to sit erect, their flaccid

salutes, their planning for the infinite,

their unprincipled devotion to principles.

______

MEMORANDUM:ADDENDA TO EMPLOYEE MANUAL

1.2.4This Policy Manual is subject to immediate revision at any time.The President’s revisions shall
be
communicated by the Minister of Personnel via hand gestures from the top of the
tower recently
erected in her honor.

1.2.4.5All powers not specifically reserved by the Creator shall, for the
purposes of this manual, be
deemed to fall within the President’s purview.

2.1.3Any attempts to discuss the contents of this manual shall be construed
as a failure to operate
within the parameters of this manual.

2.5Employees’ dreams, while not specifically encompassed by this policy
manual, should not be
contrary to the goals and intentions of the President.

3.1.2When positions are being reduced, the President may terminate any
employee who has
disagreed, seemed to disagree, or has given indications that he or she might disagree with her in the
future, regardless of that
individual’s qualifications and job performance.

3.1.3Employees not currently being terminated may be required to furnish
musical
accompaniment–in the form of traditional singing and/or klezmer music–during the termination
proceedings.

4.1.2Any employee found walking, talking, doodling, writing, gazing absently,
breathing with
excessive force, or otherwise showing evidence of a private,
internal life over which the Institute has
no apparent jurisdiction and which,
if unchecked, might lead to critical, creative, and/or contrary
thoughts about
the
Institute and its President shall be subject to disciplinary action
including, but not
limited to, death by electrocution, hanging, and/or lethal
injection.

5.1What is known as the “Employee Manual” is not the Employee Manual.The True Employee Manual
exists in the
mind of the President.

5.2All employees are responsible to the True Employee Manual.

______

MEMORANDUM:ON STUDENT UNREST

That they have legitimate concerns

is not the primary issue.That the dorms

are substandard and have always been so.

That retention rates are falling.That

their entrance exams were found

to contain high levels of radon.

That the food service’s mulligan stew

was without a single mulligan.

That the professors misunderstood

their job descriptions.That small arms fire

occasionally erupted outside the classroom.

That the FBI agents were poorly disguised.

That the president began all of her

on campus addresses, “If only

we had foreseen.”That the president

began her public speeches, “This

is the dawn of a new era.”That

the new clock tower wore dark clouds

like a sombrero.That the open meeting

was closed to the public.That communications

were expedited by gossiping behind

the toxic materials shed.That

the student body was barely breathing.

That periodic and unannounced strip searches.

That mail was rerouted and sliced open.

That they have legitimate concerns is a

matter for future discussions.That

we are here to listen.That the door

is always open.Be assured:All
of these

inconveniences will be addressed

in due time, as set forth in document

226, section 12, paragraph 3.

______

MEMORANDUM:OUTSIDE AGITATORS

We have spotted them sulking

in the arroyos, interfacing

with the returning units.

We have watched them cribbing

answers in the featureless void.

That they have eroded the trust.

That they have brandished the facts.

Varnished the facts.Embellished

fruitfully in the congealed

classroom of our corporate hearts.

That the lexicon is exhausted

is not a discussion point

for this distinguished committee.

Be advised:The tools for banishment

have been assembled on the outskirts.

That we will use them to lever

the recalcitrant agitators

from their untenable philosophies.

That our resolve be communicated.

That the truth is no obstacle.

______

Letter of
Recommendation for Dave Jonas

Never pay a poet by the hour.

--Milton
Swift

Although
I do not know Mr. Jonas well, I have seen him lying awake at night, his griefs
and regrets
upon him like spiders.I have seen the web they spin, the way he tears at it with the very
hands that
shaped the past into an irrevocable chaos that even now looks like
the absence of light at the bottom
of a bottomless lake.And yet I recommend him highly to your
program with its rotting railroad ties
and slapdash, though often critically
praised, settlements in the heretofore uninhabited zones.Mr.
Jonas might be a welcome addition,
carrying, as he often does, a faggot of pickaxes, spades, and
shovels on his back.Unlike many of my
colleagues, Mr. Jonas has not settled into a comfortable
mediocrity—his mediocrity
has been hard won.He had to tear
himself from the grasp of a brilliant
future, lock himself away, stuff every
gap with old, worn T-shirts, avert his eyes to avoid the descent
into genius.But avoid it he has, with the
assistance of a panoply of bad habits and misprisions.His
work is consistently late and often
incomplete.His signature is a searing genius boggled by
vicissitude and ambivalence.And just when one might expect some
extraordinary insight, one is met
with a tepid image, a trailing off, a
frustrating incompleteness, an image, say, of a mouse nibbling a
cracker
quietly in a midnight kitchen, or of a toaster oven, not cleaned for months,
bursting suddenly
into flame.The
trepidation with which I tender this letter can be traced to this:Were Mr. Jonas to
depart, the
performance of those remaining might be held to a higher, more universal
standard that
would place all of us in jeopardy.If I can be of further assistance in your evaluation of Mr.
Jonas,
please let me know soon:What
little I believe I know of him is under constant threat of revision.